Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A Handy - Even Fun - Way to Track Trends

Let me start by confessing that I should have posted this blog quite awhile ago but I’ve been having too much fun tinkering with the trends tracker at Indeed.com.

Earlier today, Indeed posted a press release saying online job postings for accounting are down 53 percent from last year, but the number of clicks by job seekers looking at accounting postings is up 79 percent.

I called CEO Paul Forster, who coincidentally used to own JobsintheMoney, to get a little color commentary on the numbers. Indeed.com is a search engine for jobs, so it picks up listing from all sorts of site, including ours.

“You’re seeing two tendencies,” he said. “One is for the number of jobs to decline and the other is for the number of job seekers and their activity to increase. You could look at it like a supply and demand change - the amount of job-seeking and clicks-per-job has increased dramatically.”

Couldn’t you also make the assumption that accountants are worried about their jobs, so they’re checking out the employment market just in case? And that companies, meanwhile, are filling more jobs simply by posting them on their own Web sites?

He then lured me over to the Trends button. This tool calculates the popularity of any search term or the relative popularity of two terms (just put a comma between them).

Inquiring minds need to know: Who’s posting more listings, KPMG vs. PWC? Which is the more popular designation, Certified Public Accountant or Certified Fraud Examiner? PeopleSoft versus Oracle?

Be forewarned. It’s way too much fun given how useful it is to see trends in demand for skills and for employees.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice post. The trends definitely speak much of the current global crisis. With more people getting laid off and fewer job openings, the stakes to get a job is definitely high.